Meteor Crater

For me, it is not that easy to get to Flagstaff. Between me and there is the mother of all restricted areas, White Sands Missile Range. The problem is whether to go north of the area or south. The best way depends on which auxiliary restricted areas are in use. Because of all this I did not really know my route until I was in flight. Partially because of this I did not know I would be flying by Meteor Crater until, bam, there it was off the left side of the nose when I was descending to land at Flagstaff.

Meteor Crater is of impressive size. It is about 4,000 feet across and over 500 feet deep, as it is now, having been filled in for the last 50,000 years or so. At one time it was thought that the meteor must have been of comparable size, and much digging was done to try to find the large body. Now it is thought that the meteor was only about 150 feet across and the huge size of the crater is due to the explosion caused by the huge release of energy of such a body , moving at about 26,000 miles per hour hitting our atmosphere causing huge pressures and vaporization.

It really wasn't well established that the crater was actually caused by a meteor until fairly recently. I thought it was interesting that the scientist that did the research to establish that has the same last name as the scientist that kept being mentioned on Lowell Observatory in connection with things such as comets. The comet scientist is Dr. Carolyn Shoemaker, remember Shoemaker/Levy Comet that slammed into Jupiter. The meteor scientist is Dr. Eugene Shoemaker. Yep, husband and wife who have both done a lot of work around Flagstaff.

Of the approximately 150 known impact craters in the world, this one is probably the most obvious, best preserved, large example. I recently visited a very nice impact crater near Odessa, Texas. It is very similar, even down to the futile search for the large body that caused the crater, but it is very very very much smaller and is something you would have to really be looking for to see from your RV.

Interesting Sandstone Structure at the Freeway Turnoff to Meteor Crater

Unlike a lot of such stunning natural sites, Meteor Crater is privately owned. Often, privately owned attraction seems to be a synonym for "cheesy," but that is not the case here. The museum seems scientifically accurate and the whole operation is handled with quite a bit of class. I was disappointed that I just missed the last guided tour of the day. You are not allowed to hike very far at all, except on the tour and the normal tourist can not hike to the bottom of the crater.